


Finding Nemo

by LinguisticJubilee



Series: The Cephalopod Who Loved Me [7]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (that's a canonized tag now btw thank you wtnv), Episode Six, M/M, No Tentacle Sex, Octo!Phil, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LinguisticJubilee/pseuds/LinguisticJubilee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil Coulson got turned into an octopus, got turned <i>out of</i> an octopus, fell in love with Clint Barton, and got stabbed in the heart by a magical space staff.  It's been a weird ten years.</p><p>It's about to get weirder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Fish or Cut Bait

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS IS A WORK IN PROGRESS. PROCEED WITH CAUTION AND POSSIBLY A GASMASK.**
> 
> I started writing this fic a year ago. It's still not finished, both for personal reasons and because the fic keeps getting longer than I'm expecting. But I've been sitting on the first chapter for a year, and you've all been so patient with me, so I wanted to share it with you early. Here's some important things to know: 
> 
> 1\. This fic will get finished. Just not, you know, today. I don't know when the next update will come.  
> 2\. This chapter ends on a cliffhanger. If that worries you, please don't feel bad about waiting until the fic gets finished.  
> 3\. Octo!Phil always has a happy ending.
> 
> This fic also carries with it the usual warning of "GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE." People get dead in this fic. And yet I still call it crack. IDK. 
> 
> I love you all. The support and enthusiasm you give these silly little stories means so much to me, that I wanted to give you something back. Enjoy <3 <3 
> 
>  
> 
> (If you don't know what Octo!Phil is, [click here](http://linguisticjubilee.tumblr.com/octophil)!)

“Phil.” There’s a hand lightly on his shoulder, and Phil is awake in an instant. 

“Phil, you gotta come quick, something’s wrong.”  Clint is standing by the bed in his pajamas, visibly shaking. Phil leaps out of bed, but Clint grabs his wrist before he can reach for the gun in the nightstand.  Clint tugs him out the door and into the light of the living room.  “Clint, what’s—”

“There.”  Clint parks them in front of the small aquarium.  “Look.” He drops Phil’s wrist to point at the tank emphatically.

Phil glances at the tank briefly before turning back to Clint.  “What is—”

“Mindy’s eating her eggs.”

Phil stares blearily at the tank, blue-green light harsh in his eyes.  “What,” he manages, the adrenaline subsiding finally.

Clint’s standing in nothing but his purple sleep pants, and his arms are hugged tight to his chest.  “Mindy’s eating her eggs.”

“What time is it?”

“Three-thirty.”  Clint worries his lip.  “I couldn’t sleep, too much coffee, you know, so I came out here ‘cause the fish calm me and Mindy was _eating her unborn babies._ ”

Phil peers back into the tank and sees little blue Mindy by her clutch, her stripes shining as she cheerfully gobbles one egg after another.  “I’m sorry, Clint,”  he says, sighing, “but there’s nothing we can do.  It takes angelfish a while to learn how to be good parents.  The next time will be better.”  

Clint grabs his wrist again. “But can’t you, you know,” he drops his voice conspiratorially, “ _tell her_ to stop eating their eggs?”

Phil rubs his forehead with his free hand.  “That’s not how it works.  And even if it was, angelfish are too stupid to understand anything.  If they were smarter, they wouldn’t eat their eggs.”

Clint’s ducks his head to look in the tank.  “There were so many,” he says, his voice quiet.

Phil steps closer.  “It’ll be okay.  Mork and Mindy will—”

“Danny.”

“What?”

“Mindy and Danny, not Mork and Mindy.  I keep telling you this.” Clint looks back at Phil and offers him a tiny smile.

Phil stares at him for a stupidly long time.  He stares at Clint’s stupid smile and the circles under his eyes and Phil can see beyond him to the kitchen where two coffee mugs sit on the windowsill and a Costco bag of Famous Amos cookies is upended on the counter.  It’s three in the morning, and Clint woke him up to try and talk the fish out of eating their own young.  “Jesus Christ,” he says finally, “please marry me.”

Clint’s eyes grow huge.  He looks behind him, which is _ridiculous_ because it’s not like there’s going to be someone else in their apartment Phil’s proposing to. He looks back at Phil, eyebrows knit together and mouth open.  “Marry you?  Like, _marry_ marry you? Like, _wedding_ marry you?”

“Like, _marry_ marry me.  _Wedding_ marry me. For the love of god, please.”

Clint looks at Phil, and Phil has dreamed of this moment so many times, but no fantasies of dreams and beaches could ever be as perfect as this moment. Clint shakes his head.  “Why do people always assume you’re the sane one?”

Phil smiles.  “No idea.”

Clint laughs.  Phil is in love with the sound.  “Okay.  Okay, you crazy fucker, I’ll marry you.”

“Thank god.” His heart might burst out of his chest in happiness.  “Can we go back to sleep now?  It’s too early.”

***

Phil peeks a look at his phone for the fifth time that day.

**CB:** _ugh i hate this lets just steal nicki and clara and get married by elvis hashtag vegas_

**Me:** _You can just type #, you know.  It’s available on your keyboard._

**CB:** _ur a_ _eggplant emoji_

**Me:** _Again, there’s a button for that. Emojis were in fact created to replace words._

Phil doesn’t know why he’s giggling like a teenager about texting.  Clint and Phil spend plenty of missions apart, and Phil has never felt the need to duck into the bathroom and text Clint constantly.  Yet on this mission the team has yet to leave the safehouse, and Phil finds himself constantly sneaking his phone out of his pocket to see if he missed a message.  It’s just...Clint agreed to marry him.  It’s been three weeks and the thought still makes him giddy. 

Pham bangs on the bathroom door. “Coulson, for the love of your disgusting Debbie Donuts, will you _please_ get your ass out of the bathroom?”

Shit.  Coulson flushes the toilet hurriedly, knowing he’s not fooling anyone.  As he steps out of the cramped bathroom, Pham places a hand on his shoulder.  “Now,” she says wryly, “I know ya’ll text like twelve-year-olds when you’re away from each other. And I know this mission is a lot of ‘hurry up and wait,’ but give us all a break.  The bathroom is not for piddling around on your phone but for actually, you know, piddling?” 

Coulson snorts.  “Alright, Pham.”

She bows her head theatrically.  “We thank you for your sacrifice.”

At that moment, the burner phone Agent Jimenez has been staring at pings loudly.  She scrambles out of her chair and checks it.  “We have an address!” she shouts. 

“Oh, hell no,” Pham swears and rushes into the restroom. 

Their destination is a warehouse in a shitty suburb of Sydney where they’ve received reports of someone hiding a few vials of Banner’s blood.  No one really expects there to actually _be_ vials, but there’s some politics between SHIELD and the Australians that need careful handling, so they’re investigating it anyway.  It’s dark by the time they drive up to the warehouse lot.  Jimenez and Coulson take the upper floor while Romo and Alexander take the ground floor, with Pham watching in the van as always.

The warehouse belongs to a janitorial services contractor, and the shelves were meticulously labeled cleaning supplies.  They search for fifteen minutes, unscrewing bottles and rifling through boxes, but absolutely nothing looks out of place, let alone capable of storing blood samples. “I think this is a dud,” Jimenez says, putting a roll of toilet paper up to her eye like a spyglass.

That’s when a shot sounds and Jimenez falls to the ground, dead.  Phil ducks to the floor and the power goes out.  His comm screeches and goes silent.  “Does anyone copy?” He asks.

Gunshots erupt downstairs.  Phil unholsters his gun and rises to his knees, careful to remain out of the view of the windows.

A scream pierces the air behind him, and he pivots to face it.  It sounds like--but Phil ignores it. Everything sounds like Clint when Phil is anxious.

“Can anyone hear me?” He asks again. The comm is silent, even though shots still ring out from the ground floor.

The person screams again.  It's a masculine, throaty scream, and it seems to be coming from the back of the warehouse. Phil crouches and walks towards it, even as something in the back of his mind tells him he shouldn’t.

“ _PHIL!”_

His heart begins racing, because that’s _Clint_ , he knows it. He runs towards the back.

_“Phil! Oh god, oh god, PHIL!”_

It sounds like it’s coming from behind a door in the back, but Phil can barely see anything.  His eyes itch, and the world around him flattens as it sharpens.  Color bleeds away as the light from the windows brightens, and he can see the layout of the floor clearly for the first time since the lights went out.  Someone behind the door in the back is using a flashlight, and Phil can track its glow through the crack in the door.

Clint screams again, and Phil can’t stop himself.  He kicks down the door, gun held high.  The lights surge back on, blinding Phil.  Something hits Phil, hard, in the back of the head, and he drops his gun.

“Phil!” Clint cries, voice full of pain, and he sounds so _close_. 

“Clint!” Phil struggles to stand.  His arms shake with the effort of pulling himself up.  “CLINT!” Phil can hear the scrape of shoes on linoleum, and he rolls out of the way of a kick.

“Phil!” He hears, and _where is Clint?_ “Oh god, oh god, PHIL!”

Phil doesn’t know what to do.  His head is foggy from the hit.  _What should he do?_ Phil’s eyesight begins to adjust, and he sees a foot fly at his stomach.  Phil kicks out with his leg, trying to trip the man, but Phil’s shoe falls off, revealing a socked tentacle.  _Oh._ He wraps the tentacle around the man’s leg, pulling him down to Phil’s level.  The man’s head hits the ground with a sickening crack and he goes still. 

Phil can hear footsteps of more men approaching. “ _CLINT!”_ Phil tries to stand, but both legs are tentacles now. Clint is still screaming. This is not what Phil needs, Phil needs something _different_ , he needs to be bigger or stronger or faster.  Someone wrenches his arms out from under him, forcing them behind his back.  He feels a ripple of pain through his arms, and they turn into tentacles, too.  He twists out of the person's grip and rolls away. 

“PHIL! OH GOD, OH GOD, PHIL!”

This is not what Clint needs, Clint needs something _different,_ something more, and before Phil realizes what is happening his whole body is seizing.  “NO!” He shouts, but he can’t stop it.  Clint is still screaming when Phil’s hearing fades out. 

Phil is an octopus.  An octopus on dry land, and he can’t fight back when a grim-faced goon stuffs him into a tight black bag.

***

“Clint.” The light in bedroom flicks on and Clint jolts awake.  Natasha is standing in the doorway, looking serious. 

He glances at the alarm clock, which blinks back 4:22 in a weary green.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nick needs to speak to you.”

“What’s wrong?” He repeats, sitting up. Something is always wrong at 4 a.m. (He got engaged at 3:30 a.m. and was sound asleep by four o’clock, _thank you very much._ )

“Nick will tell you. He’s waiting in the kitchen.”

Clint rubs a hand over his face, disguising how alert he is.   His SHIELD cell phone hasn’t gone off once.  Nick is in his kitchen, and he brought Natasha to run interference.  Then is only one possibility that’s both shitty enough AND personal enough to warrant such careful handling: something’s wrong with Phil.  _Shit._ “Why are you even here?” he groans, buying time.

“Because Nick said, and I quote, ‘One of the perks of being Director is not having to see Barton naked.’”

“Hey, I’m not naked,” Clint says, offended.  “I’m only naked when Phil’s here.”  And oh god, what if Phil’s dead and Clint will _never be naked with him again?_

“Get your ass up, Barton,” Tasha says.  Clint complies, pulling on a pair of clean sweatpants and the hoodie Phil left on a chair.  It smells like Phil and _what the hell is happening?_ He follows Nat out the door.

Nick is standing in the kitchen with his back to them, peering down to look in the aquarium. “I thought your fish had eggs.”

“Mindy ate them all,” Clint says acidly.  “What’s going on?”

“Sit down, Barton.”  The three of them sit at Clint and Phil’s rickety kitchen table.  Clint drums his fingers on the table until he freezes under Nick’s stare.  “I’m going to tell you a story, Barton, and you’re not going to ask me any questions until I’m finished.” 

“What kind of story?” Clint asks, because he’s a dick. 

Nick just stares at him, unimpressed.  “An hour ago Coulson and his team were ambushed during a routine pickup at a warehouse.  After the dust settled, Coulson was missing and another agent was dead.”

Clint sucks in a breath.  “Did—”

“Not done.  Agent Romo reports that Coulson and another agent were on the upper floor of the warehouse when they were attacked.  Coulson and Jimenez stopped answering their comms during the fight. About fifteen minutes later the assailants retreated. When Romo and the others went upstairs, Jimenez was dead and Coulson was missing.  The tracker in his comm had been disabled.” 

Clint nods, trying to remain calm.  “So then—”

“Not done.”

“God _dammit_!” Clint punches the table, hiding his face in his other hand.  “Okay.”

“When the team did a sweep of the building, they found a tracker on the floor of a backroom of the warehouse.  They couldn’t identify it, so they began running tests on it and set it off. That’s when I was brought in, because that is a tracker I implanted in Coulson the last time he almost died.”

Clint brought his head up.  “Phil had a tracker?”

“Not d—”

“No, uh-uh, you answer me this. Phil had a _tracker?_ ”

“Yes.  It was no way connected with SHIELD.”

Clint’s eyes narrow.  “Did Phil know he had a tracker?”

Nick shrugs.  “I care about him.” Like that’s a fucking answer.

“Do _I_ have a tracker?”

“Phil cares about you.”

Clint turns to Nat.  “Do you have a tracker?”

Nat smiles ruthlessly.  “Not anymore.”

“What the fuck,” Clint says, looking from Nat to Nick.  He is surrounded by crazy people with no concept of boundaries. He rubs at his temples. “So this tracker, the bad guys cut it out or what?”

Nick shakes his head.  “The tracker they found was completely devoid of organic material.  No blood, no skin, not a single cell.  The only stuff on it was dust from the floor and a clothing fiber.” 

 _Not a single cell._ “Oh, shit.” Clint looks over at the aquarium.  “They turned him into an octopus.”

“It’s a good plan. Turn him helpless, take his clothes and all evidence of him.  You confuse the hell out of the guys that would be searching for him, and now you’ve got a senior SHIELD agent completely dependent on you.  They didn’t know about the tracker—”

“Nobody knew about the tracker,” Clint grumbles.

“—so it got left on the ground when Coulson’s freaky transformation popped it out clean as a whistle.  This means we’re looking for people with a lot of brainpower behind them to pull something like this off.  Phil’s alive,” Nick adds, an emotional note in his voice.  “No one goes to this kind of effort to kill someone.”

“Right,” Clint whispers.  Phil is alive.  He’s a red and white octopus in the clutches of unknown baddies and god knows what they want from him, but he’s _alive_.

“The guys on the ground in Australia are trying to track the goons who took him.  l sent Maria down there with special instructions to watch for anything suspicious from the team. We three need to figure out the bigger picture.  These guys need inside knowledge of Coulson’s file, a stationary base to hide a functioning tank, and access to Tesseract energy to turn him.” 

“Actually,” Natasha says idly, “that last one is not necessarily true.” 

Both Nick and Clint turn to look at her. 

She smiles grimly.  “Coulson’s ‘condition’ has flared up five times since Barton first found him.  Tesseract energy was only involved in two of those incidents.” 

Nick shakes his head.  “There’s a holdover, sometimes, Phil told me that.”

“Did you ever question what provokes that holdover?” Natasha raises an eyebrow.  “Coulson freely admits himself that he doesn’t have control over it.  What does he say whenever someone asks him to change on command?”

“It doesn’t work like that,” Clint repeats, a bitter taste in his mouth.

Natasha nods. “So how does it work? What causes these incidents?”  She waits a beat, and the silence is damning.  “I have a theory, no more than that.”

Nick snorts.  “A theory you didn’t feel like sharing?”

“I shared it with the one person who needed to know. I’m not responsible for what he did with the information after that.” She sighs.  “The three incidents are isolated from each other and varied in the type of characteristic Coulson exhibited.  But all were reactions to a real or perceived threat.  Not a threat to himself, because I think we’ve all seen Coulson put himself in danger several times throughout the years with no supernatural side effects.” Natasha looks Clint in the eyes.  “All three incidents involved a threat to you, Clint.”

Clint looks into Natasha’s serious eyes.  His knee-jerk reaction is to shout _no,_ but.  Clint can still see it, just like it was yesterday:  the large, bright eye of a humpback whale floating just above the water, come to deliver his ship-wrecked ass to Phil.  He can hear Natasha, her voice steady as she tells him she saw a color-changing Coulson in the middle of a HYDRA base. And he can see Phil, embarrassed and ink-smudged, saying it was just _instincts._  “No, no that’s not right,” Clint says, shaking himself out of his brain.  “That one time in the HYDRA cell, maybe, and the whales, but.  When he suddenly grew an ink sac and emptied it, that was just a mess-up in R&D, that didn’t have anything to do with me.”

Nick points a finger at Clint. “Fuck, it did. They were experimenting with arrow tips that explode mid-air and their prototype set the bow on fire.  It scared the shit out of Phil, that’s why he was so shaken up.” 

“But, but tonight. I was here.  I wasn’t in danger, I was in bed.” 

Natasha leans forward.  “If they faked it, if they could make Phil believe they got to you, his body could respond automatically.  They could turn him without Tesseract energy.”

Clint’s eyes prick dangerously.  “He never told me.” 

“Yeah, and I can see why,” Nick says, rubbing his forehead.  “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t have run for the hills the moment you found out you could be a danger to Phil. And I never would have let the two of you work together in the field.  He probably knew for years and never said anything.”

 _Fuck you, Phil._ “Why didn’t I figure it out?”

Nick grimaces.  “It would appear that you and I have the same weakness, Clint.  We both believe Phil when he says he has something under control.”

 _God, Phil, fuck you twice._ Clint stands up and moves to the aquarium.  He watches Mindy and Danny swim around each other happily.  _Nothing good ever happens at four a.m._

“Our job just got simpler,” Nick says, because Nick Fucking Fury can get his head back on track after his mind got blown a hell of alot faster than Clint can.  “Or really fucking harder, depending on how you look at it.  We’re not just trying to find someone with access to Coulson’s file.  We’re looking for someone who knows the situation so well they can draw the same conclusion as Romanov. We’re looking for a mole among our own.”

Clint stares at the fish.  Mindy poops mid-swim.  “I feel you, Mindy,” Clint murmurs, watching the turd float to the surface. “I feel you.”  


	2. Red Herring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It is ass o’clock in the morning,” Melinda May says at the other end of the conference table, “so you better have a good reason for why I’m here instead of at home in my bunny slippers.”

Phil opens his eyes and immediately knows something is wrong. Instead of blinking his eyelids he widens his pupils because _octopuses do not have eyelids_ and Phil is an octopus.  Again.  He’s held captive.  Again.

Phil is getting really tired of these--what did Clint call them? _Octopus occasions_? Or was it _cephalopod circumstances_?

_Clint_. Phil shoots up, whirling around the room. A quick overview says it’s a research lab, white and shiny, with nothing to suggest where a kidnapped archer may be hidden. Phil can still hear his screams, _Phil, oh god, oh god, Phil…_ Phil runs a tentacle on the side of the glass, thinking.

A side-effect of Phil’s transformation is the complete erasure of any physical injuries, like a reset button on the cellular level. This means Phil is free from his concussion and can review his memories with clarity.  He doesn’t remember Clint saying anything _but_ those words, over and over again, _Phil, oh god, oh god, Phil._ Why wouldn’t Clint say something else when Phil barged into the room? For that matter, did Phil even see Clint?

Was Clint there, in the warehouse? Or was it just a room full of goons with a recorded message, waiting to take Phil down?

Phil has always known he runs the risk of turning tentacled when someone he loves is in danger. But the way he sees it, it’s not any different for him than it would be for anybody else. Everyone Phil loves has risked their lives for him at one point or another.  Yeah, Phil runs the added risk of gaining six extra legs and gills, but that’s no excuse to shirk his duty.  But the idea that someone _knew_ about it, and _exploited_ it? That chafes. That is unacceptable.

His anger is calming, in a strange sort of way. It gives him a purpose: get out of here, and get to Clint. Then drag Clint to an altar before another mission or kidnapper or whatever can interrupt their wedding. That’s the end goal. Clint. Altar. In order to get to that altar, he needs to start at Step One: surveying his surroundings. 

He’s in a tank with a base that measures about four feet by two feet.  It’s barely enough for Phil to stretch out in, and his tentacles brush up against the glass unless he curls them in. The bottom of the tank is covered with standard black aquarium rocks, all polished and about uniform sized. There’s a few strands of kelp growing out from the bottom, and some snails along the floor that Phil presumes is a snack.  He swims upward, guessing the tank to be about five feet high, with a dark lid fitting over the last six inches.  He reaches a tentacle up to attach to the top of the lid...and slides off.

Phil shakes his tentacle, confused.  He reaches up again.  The lid of the tank is coated with some sort of fiber, slick and uniform to the touch. He can’t sucker onto it, no matter how hard he tries. He sticks a tentacle to the glass wall, just to make sure the problem isn’t _him_. But no, Phil can stick just fine to everything except those strange fibers. He floats back down, and is able to immediately identify his nemesis.

The floor around his tank is surrounded by Astroturf. Barf-green, sickly shiny, fake grass.  Phil was right in his initial assessment that his tank is in a research lab.  Men and women in sharp lab coats sit in front of science equipment, and all that equipment sits on carpeting made entirely of Astroturf. There’s a tank to his right with scallops and snails, and a tank to his left with a black-and-white striped sea snake, and the lids to both of them have been entirely covered with green astroturf. If Phil would guess, the outside of his lid is carpeted as well. He reaches up to touch his furry ceiling, but there’s something about the slick and rubbery nature of Astroturf that sends his leg slipping away from the surface.

Phil’s in hell. Green, fuzzy, plastic hell. He bangs his head against the glass.

***

“It is ass o’clock in the morning,” Melinda May says at the other end of the conference table, “so you better have a good reason for why I’m here instead of at home in my bunny slippers.”  She says _bunny slippers_ with the same disgust Clint might say _tax season._

“Someone took Phil,” Clint says before Nat and Nick can, since he’s trying to show emotional control or some shit, “and we need to find who outed him as part cephalopod.”

Long before Clint had ever met _Phil_ , the Captain America dork turned aquarium exhibit, he had heard the rumors about _Agent Coulson_ , the hero gone tragically missing in action.  Coulson was a mythic hero constructed of tall tales, like Johnny Appleseed or Mick Jagger, and Clint had been delighted to learn that most of the legends were true, including: _Phil Coulson discovered a double agent by the way he filled out Form 23-D._  “Everyone messes up,” Phil had said when Clint asked about it. “One little detail can unravel someone’s cover, even if it’s a suspiciously clean browser history. The bastard always gets caught.”

Now there’s another double agent, someone who sold Phil’s cephalopod secrets to the bad guys, and Clint’s really fucking hoping this particular bastard has left their own dirty digital fingerprints all over this mess.  Back at Clint's apartment, Nick and Nat had yelled at each other like extremely deadly fishwives, with Nick saying things like _I would rather have Tony Stark marry my grandmother than get his hands on SHIELD files,_ and Nat saying things like _Stark works faster than six agents, and we don’t have six agents we trust right now._ It took Clint, ever the child of marital strife, to remind them of a compromise: an absolutely faithful agent who has been doing nothing these last five years except getting really fucking good at processing paperwork.

When Melinda murmurs, “Phil’s a good reason,” Clint knows he chose right.

Nick leaves them after an hour to go Director-ing, mumbling about protecting the free world and seeming angry about it. Melinda and Natasha have split the “O-Files,” all the digital records of Phil’s tentacle tendencies in the database. Clint throws a tennis ball at the ceiling and makes dirty jokes.  It used to be funny how notoriously bad Clint’s paperwork skills, but it stings now. All Clint can do is flip through his memory like a photo album and hope to find details he didn’t notice when they were in front of him.

After two hours, Melinda asks, “What do we know about Victoria Pham?”

Clint pictures it immediately: Phil, tentacles sticking out the arms of his suit, trying to stop Tori from bleeding out from a bullet wound in the back of their van. He shakes his head.  “A world in which Pham is evil is no world I want to live in.” When Melinda raises an eyebrow, Clint shrugs defensively. “Look, there’s a finite amount of goodness and light in this universe, and about eighty percent of it is wrapped up in that woman and her weird Southern accent.”

Natasha looks up.  “Agent Pham took two bullets in the firefight in Sydney.  She’s still in surgery.  Traitors usually choose not to get shot during ambushes they plan, and never twice.”

It says something sad about the state of the world when that convinces Melinda more than Clint’s character reference.

Clint adds Pham to his mental listed titled, “Please Jesus Not These Ones.” It’s a short list, especially compared to the other two, “Lacks the Ambition to Turn Traitor” and “Eh? Who the Fuck Knows.”

It’s just beginning to be normal people work hours when Natasha says, “Who is Olivia Miller and why don’t I know who she is?”, and Clint misses catching the tennis ball, because _holy fuck_ is he stupid.

His brain creates a new list: “Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding.”

***

Phil is driven out of his planning by a dull _thud thud thud_ of a finger hitting glass.Phil instantly turns angry. There is a special circle in hell reserved for two types of people: idiots who drive slowly in the passing lane and jerks who tap on aquarium tanks. Phil swoops up to glare his captor in the face.

He’s an older man, with gray hair cut carelessly and wrinkles behind his glasses. He’s wearing a labcoat and a bowtie, like the whimsical fashion choice can disguise the fact that he participated in an abduction. ( _Bill Noosh the Science Douche,_ says the part of Phil’s brain that has copied Clint’s speech patterns.)

“Good morning, Phil!” Bill Noosh says, Phil reading his lips. The scientist’s smile is wide and expressive as he speaks; he probably sounds loud on the other side of the glass. “My name is _(Ted? Ed? Greg?)_. Welcome to our lab!”

Phil taps a right tentacle against the tip of his left, trying to mime tapping a watch.

Bill Noosh just smiles. “You’re going to be here for a long time. Think of this as your new home!” Phil had actually wanted to ask what time it was, but sure, he’ll take that information.  “All right, Mr. Phil,” the scientist says, “time for your blood sample.”  He moves his gloved hand from behind his back to show that he’s holding a long syringe.  He flips open a hinged door in the top of the Phil’s tank and reaches the syringe in.

Phils launches himself at the man’s hand. He wraps one tentacle around the scientist’s wrist, pinning him to the wall of the tank. He wrenches the syringe from the man’s grasp and stabs him in the forearm with it. Ted/Ed/Greg screams, and Phil can see his knees buckle. Phil climbs the man’s arm like a ladder out of the tank. He clambers on top of Bill Noosh’s head and reaches a tentacle around to cover the man’s nose and mouth.

Multiple sets of hands grab Phil and pry him off the scientist’s head.  He leaves angry welts on their skin, but there are too many people for Phil to fight off. He wrestles away for a moment, but his head is plunged back into the tank, and as his gills take a desperate breath of water he recognizes the bitter, earthy taste of clove oil, marine biologists’ favorite anesthetic.

Phil struggles, but the hands holding him down don’t let up, and soon his limbs grow heavy and his mind drifts away from him into black.

***

It’s seventy-five degrees Fahrenheit when Clint lands the Quinjet on the Siberia base’s tarmac, and there’s not a snowflake in sight. _Fine_ , Clint huffs to himself _, ruin the stereotype, why don’t you._ The base is a small building with a landing strip, flanked all around by green trees and silence.

The base commander is waiting for them on the runway.  “Good evening, Agents— _Holy shit_ ,” he says, jaw dropping. “You’re—”

“Agents Romanov and Barton, yes,” Natasha says curtly, walking toward the building. She’s got a folder tucked under her arm, her Coulson School of Scary Competence persona fully engaged.

“But--you’re sure _you_ need to meet with _Miller?_ ” he says, rushing to keep up.

“Yes, Agent Stephens, I am sure. Is she already in the conference room?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Then please show us the way.”

The poor guy looks gobsmacked. “Right. Right. This way.”  He opens a door and leads them down a hallway lined with floral wallpaper and checkered linoleum that screams _the 80s called_ , _they want their depressing corporatism back._

They reach a wooden door and Stephens hesitates over the doorknob. Natasha stares him down until he backs away and all but runs down the hall. Once he’s gone, Nat opens the door.

Olivia Miller stands up from behind a table, and you can see her mouth curl with disgust when she recognizes who’s behind the door. “Oh, fuck,” she says, drawing it out, “how are you going to ruin my life this time, Barton?”

It's been fifteen years since Clint was recruited and placed under the supervision of Olivia Miller, then a young, rising star in SHIELD ranks. He can still perfectly remember her sneer as she called him an idiot, overly dramatic and careless with his missions. It wasn't exactly a wrong characterization, and Clint didn't blame her when she ignored his gut instinct that something was wrong at the local aquarium. Nick and Phil, however, had no problem blaming Miller.  Miller got assigned to a temporary job in Siberia to get her out of the leadership chain.

_Temporary job, my ass_ , Clint thinks, because she’s still here in the cold armpit of Russia, glaring at Clint from behind a table.

Natasha slides into the room smoothly, sitting in a chair opposite Miller. Clint moves to the corner of the room and stands, watching Miller closely. The brown hair is a dye job, but so expertly done it could be natural.  She’s taken good care of her skin, so she doesn’t have very many new wrinkles. To tell the truth, she doesn’t look any different than she did a decade ago.

Clint wonders what differences she sees while looking at him.

“Agent Miller,” Natasha says, opening her folder on the table, “I understand you’ve put in a request for transfer?”

Miller pulls her gaze from Clint to Natasha.  “Yes,” she says, sitting down.  “That’s correct.”

“And I understand you’ve put in a request for transfer—” Natasha looks at her folder “—seven times over the past ten years?”

Miller’s mouth twitches. “Whenever the opportunity came up.”

“Mmm,” Natasha says, keeping her tone disinterested, “and why, would you say, those requests have been denied?”

Miller glances at Clint. “I wouldn’t know. Wish that I did.”

“But if you had to hazard a guess?”

Miller pauses. Clint can imagine that _because my black heart is frozen cold_ is not going to be her answer. “This base has been used as a punishment for decades. Our entire personnel is made up of people who don’t want to be here. It’s hard to distinguish oneself when one’s colleagues and superiors are not disposed to notice accomplishments.”

“Do you feel you were assigned to the Siberia base as a punishment?”

Miller grits her teeth. “I believe SHIELD was looking for a scapegoat. It was a ‘heads must roll’ situation, and my head was closest.”

“So the person who assigned you here,” Natasha looks down at the paper, “Phil Coulson, you think he was looking for a scapegoat?”

“Cut the _shit,_ ” Miller shouts, slamming her hand on the table. “Everyone in SHIELD knows the three of you are fucking buddy-buddy, so let’s stop pretending you didn’t fly all the way out here to antagonize me on the orders of his freak of nature boyfriend, okay?”

Clint is seething silently in his corner, but Natasha just closes her folder calmly.  “Someone betrayed Agent Coulson. He’s now missing, presumed dead.” Clint hisses in a breath; he knows Nat is lying, but it still hurts to hear.  “Was it you?”

Miller scoffs. “No, but thanks for thinking of me. It’s nice to have confirmation how hated I still am.”

“There are fourteen people who know that when Coulson went MIA, he spent that time as an octopus in an aquarium.” Natasha shrugs. “The other thirteen like him.”

Miller raises her eyebrows. “So now I’m in trouble because he treated me like an asshole? Amazing.”

“You have motive,” Natasha says, mildly.

“What exactly could I have done way out in bum-fuck Egypt?”

“A lot, Agent Miller. Playing dumb doesn’t become you.”

Miller throws up her hands. “At any point is this interrogation going to turn productive?”

Natasha continues, unperturbed. “Did you tell any of your coworkers that you believed you were sent here as a scapegoat?”

Miller laughs. “Why? It’s just like prison. Everyone is innocent when you hear them tell it.”

“Did you tell anyone about the aquarium case?”

“There was no _aquarium case,_ ” Miller spits out. “I was charged with taking down an arms dealer. I did that. The Frankenstein shit, that was fucking incidental.”

“I’ll amend my question. Did you tell anyone that Agent Coulson was kept as an octopus for over eighteen months?”

Miller opens her mouth and closes it.  “No,” she says shortly.

Clint keeps his face impassive, but mentally he’s raising his eyebrows.

Natasha leans forward. “Who was it?” she says forcefully.

“I didn’t—”

“Who, Miller? A friendly coworker? Your mother? A man?” Miller looks away, and Natasha smirks. “Who was he?”

“It was nothing! It has nothing to do with this—”

“That information was classified. You knew that.  You can be brought up on charges, and if you think Siberia is bad, then—”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” Miller takes a deep breath. She glances quickly up at Clint, then looks away.  “There is a town about a hundred and fifty miles south of here. I drive down there on my leave, rent a cheap room. There’s a...a bar.” Her cheeks turn pink with shame. “It’s full of sad fucks like me, people who found themselves in Siberia and really don’t want to be here.  One time, about six months ago, I see a new guy, and we just get to talking.”

Natasha blinks.  “So you just...mentioned it? The ‘Frankenstein shit’?”

“No,” Miller bites out, “we were talking about how we wound up there. He was a software developer performing audits for a Russian tech company.” Miller turns to Clint and says, “I told him I got sent out here because a little _bitch_ who hated me started sleeping with the boss.”

Clint snarls. Miller snarls right back. Natasha holds up a hand. “Then what happened?”

Miller shrugs. “We kept drinking, and talking. And he was so... _nice_ , and a good listener, and all the old anger came out and I just kept _talking_.” Miller shakes her head, and...are those tears? "And eventually he had to stop me and say, ‘I don’t get it, I think I’m missing something,’ and I said, ‘yeah, you’re missing the fact that the bastard was _a fucking octopus._ ’”

Clint doesn’t know what to feel. Rage, he’s experiencing a metric fuck-ton of rage, yeah, but also Miller is over there shame-crying and while Clint has spent the past ten years being kind of deliriously happy, Miller has been out in almost isolation. Clint is confused and angry and pitying but mostly he misses Phil, and that ache is drowning out whatever voice should tell him how to hate Miller.

Natasha is still playing it indifferent. “What did he look like? Did you get his name?”

“Greg, no last name, probably fake anyways. American accent, West Coast, maybe. White guy. Blue eyes. Brown hair, crew cut. Probably forty-five or fifty. He was short, shorter than me, but had a presence that made him seem taller.” Miller pauses. “This isn’t what you’re looking for. I didn’t tell him I was SHIELD, I didn’t tell him Coulson’s name. He was nobody, okay?”

Natasha stands up. “We’ll find out.” She stands up and walks out. Clint moves to follow her, but looks behind him.

Miller looks up wearily from the table, her eyes red and wet. “The fuck do you want, Barton?”

Clint shrugs. “Happy Solstice, Miller.”  He walks out the door.

***

Phil hates clove oil. It leaves him groggy long after he should have been able to shake it off. He’s blearily watching the scientists scuttle away at their lab tables, rolling a rock around in his tentacle.

All at once, everyone looks up at and stares at the door. They must be hearing a loud sound, and sure enough, the door is flung open and an angry woman pushes herself through. Bill Noosh stands up to greet her, but she pushes him aside, speaking so quickly all Phil can lip-read are the expletives. She walks directly up to his tank and place her hands on her hips.

_Olivia Miller_ , Phil realizes with a shock. She smirks.  “Clint Barton came to see me.” She enunciates clearly, letting him catch every word.  “He says you died, and they’re looking for the traitor who gave you up. All it took was some fake tears and a description of Tom Cruise to send him packing.” She leans down so that her face is level with Phil’s.  “I want you to know that I’m the reason you’re stuck here, and that your boytoy is still the biggest idiot I’ve met in my life.”

Phil smacks his rock against the glass, and Miller jumps back in shock. She shakes her head and laughs, standing up. “Bang away, Coulson. If it makes you feel better about being absolutely _fucked_ , then by all means, bang a rock against the glass.”

She turns on her heel and walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will probably be the last you hear from me until finals are over. Thank you very much for sticking around! <3
> 
> A HUGE thanks goes out to snowytumble/bagfullofcats for sharing [ the beautiful octopus-repellant nature of astroturf](http://linguisticjubilee.tumblr.com/post/113092066459/i-am-not-seeking-these-things-out-they-are) with us all. You have done the world a good service.


	3. Little Fishes in a Big-Ass Pond

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's been twenty-four hours since Phil was fishnapped and Clint hasn't gotten him back yet. 
> 
> He's trying not to see that as a personal failure.

“So what you’re saying is, we’ve got nothing.” Fury glares at them from the head of the conference table. Melinda, Natasha, and Clint are scattered around it surrounded by computers, with Maria calling in from Australia on some video-conferencing platform Clint is not allowed to call “Skype.”

Clint is really digging this conference table vibe.  A little bit Council of Elrond, a little bit League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Makes him feel less like they’re chickens running around with their heads cut off.  The furniture-provided boost of confidence is really the only good news Clint can see, because it’s been twenty-four hours since Phil was fishnapped and Clint hasn’t gotten him back yet.

Clint’s trying not to see that as a personal failure.

“What I’m saying is,” Natasha says, crossing her arms, “Miller doesn’t have enough puzzle pieces to be useful under interrogation. Even if her sob story about this guy is somehow connected, it can’t explain the entire information leak.”

Melinda nods her head.  “If Miller was interrogated, it means we have to widen our search parameters. We’re not just looking for people who might have turned traitor, we’re looking for people who might be willing to blab about the weirdest thing they’ve ever seen at work.”

“So instead of having nothing,” Clint ponders,  “we have even more somethings than we did before. A variety of shitty and open-ended somethings.”

“Constructive, Barton,” Nick snaps.

Clint grins tiredly. “Hey, you—”

“I have...a constructive piece of information,” Maria says from the screen, her voice weirdly stilted. “Someone on my team just gave me...material concerning the dead assailant.”

Clint snorts. “It took you a lot of effort not to say the word ‘something,’ didn’t it, Hill?”

“I’m trying to be productive, Barton, you might try it someday. Anyways, we’ve finally got a positive ID for our dead guy. His prints and DNA scan were missing from the system, and believe me, I’m going to find out why. We got him through face recognition on his wife’s Facebook photos. His name is Justin Ullman, Private first class, U.S. Army. Went missing three years ago while on home leave in Ohio. Everyone presumed he was dead, until he wound up our problem.”

“Actionable intelligence,” Nick grins, “it’s almost like we’re spies. Barton, Romanov, get yourselves to Ohio, find out how a missing private becomes masked muscle on the dirty end of an abduction. Hill, keep digging like you have been. May, broaden your search parameters and find us our blabbers. This place is falling to shit without Phil, let’s go get him back.”

***

There is no one in the lab right now, and most of the lights are turned off, leaving just enough for Phil to see clearly. Phil assumes that it is some sort of mandated break, but what time is it exactly? Is it night according to the local timezone? Would the workers even follow a traditional schedule? Phil doesn’t even know how long he’s been held for, whether it’s been days or just hours.

This operation is too complex to just be for Phil.  No, it’s clear he’s just one unethical science experiment among many in this lab of horrors.  At least he understands, finally, how he wound up in their grasp — Olivia Miller, taking her revenge.  

Siberia was always meant to be a temporary assignment.  Miller was the one who chose to prolong her position.  Every time she sent a transfer request, her paperwork got reviewed by HR and found deficient, for completely legitimate reasons.  Every time, Phil extended a personal invitation to Miller, saying that he would waive the formal transfer requirements in exchange for one thing. And every time, Miller ignored him.

To get out of Siberia, all Olivia Miller needed to do was apologize to Clint Barton.  Instead, she joined a team of evil scientists and sold Phil down the river.

Phil didn’t see this coming.  How did he not see this coming?

He spots movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turns to the left. There’s a red and white striped octopus in the tank next to him, and it’s waving furiously.

Phil stares. Other cephalopods in the aquarium never communicated with Phil, somehow sensing him as _other_. On the few occasions they did, they spoke by flashing patterns in their skin pigments. Waving is a distinctly human activity. Furthermore, that tank held a sea snake when he arrived, Phil is sure of it. He raises a tentacle and waves tentatively, unsure how to communicate _What exactly are you?_

The octopus seems to understand anyway, and in a flurry of motion it curls up six of its tentacles and its head into a tight ball, leaving one to slither ahead and another to sliver behind.  The disguise clicks in, and all of Phil’s senses tell him he’s looking at a black and white sea snake. It curls a different way, and this time it tricks Phil into seeing a blue-gray cuttlefish. It unfurls its tentacles and sheds its disguise, once again presenting itself as a striped octopus. It does a barrel roll, the closest thing to a bow one can accomplish underwater.

Phil claps with his front two tentacles. A mimic octopus, then -- Michael Goodwin's aquarium didn't have that species. The mimic octopus darts down to the bottom of its tank and begins digging through the rocks. Phil presses closer to his glass wall, trying to see what it is doing. It wraps a tentacle around something and drags it up.

It's a watch, a red and gold watch, and Phil has a moment of utter disbelief as the mimic octopus presses the watch’s face against the glass and the Iron Man helmet stares out at Phil.  Phil Coulson is an octopus trapped in a science lab in the belly of an evil lair, and even here he cannot escape Tony Stark. Phil supposes he must be grateful, because Stark is vain enough to ensure a digital watch with his face on it is completely waterproof. The mimic octopus shows him the time (11:00 pm) and the date (the day after Phil's abduction) and scurries back to hide the watch.

 _You are delightful_ , he thinks to it.  Phil has a friend. A friend on the inside and a Clint on the outside. It feels a little bit like hope.

***

Clint feels a little nervous as Natasha rings the doorbell.  He’s never been the bearer of bad news before. Well. He’s been the bearer of bad news in the Bruce Willis, _yippie-kay-yay you’re about to be dead_ kind of way, but nothing like this. He’s never had to tell a good person that their life just went tits-up awful without their consent.

The door opens, and Clint’s stomach knots get worse. Ullman’s wife--his _widow, fuck, his widow_ \--is wrapped in a bathrobe to combat the early morning cold, her blonde hair in a messy bun. “Can I help you?” She asks shorty, and _fuck_ but she looks so young.

“Good morning, Mrs. Ullman,” Natasha says in her _I’m kind and female, sympathize with me_ cover, “I’m Agent Natasha Romanov and this is my partner, Agent Clint Barton, from SHIELD.” They hold their badges out. “Could we come inside? We’d like to talk to you about your husband.”

Lauren Ullman straightens. “What happened,” she says flatly.

Natasha smiles sadly. “Mrs. Ullman, if we—”

“Nope, something brought you assholes back, so tell me now and then I’ll decide if I’ll let you in.”

Natasha pauses, then nods.  “Mrs. Ullman, your husband died yesterday.”

Mrs. Ullman sags against the door frame. “Oh, thank fuck.” She closes her eyes and breathes deeply.

Clint looks at Natasha, then back at Mrs. Ullman. _Uh._

“Uh,” Mrs. Ullman says, opening her eyes. “That’s probably not the right response to have in front of law enforcement, is it.”

Clint shakes his head mutely.

“Right.” She lifts herself up off the wall. “Come in, agents. Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Clint says brightly. Natasha shoots him a look, but Clint shrugs. It’s fucking coffee, he’s not about to turn that down.

Mrs. Ullman has them sit on the couch while she busies herself in the kitchen, probably to give herself a moment to adjust to a world where her husband is definitively dead, and not just probably dead. Clint takes the time to look around the tiny living room. Every available surface is covered with knick knacks, making this look like the house of an old lady and not a twenty-six-year-old in the prime of her life. That either makes Mrs. Ullman really fucking weird, or Clint’s favorite person ever.

Mrs. Ullman walks back in with a tray of coffee cups. She offers one to Clint and Natasha, then sits down with her own.  “I’m sorry that I reacted the way I did,” she says, wrapping her fingers around the cup. “It’s awful, obviously, that Justin ended up dead after all, and I think that at some point it’s going to hit me and I’m going to burst out sobbing. But. I’ve had people think I was a murderer for three years. There are stores I can’t walk into anymore. The police were hounding me everywhere I turned, there was even some tabloid asshole who tried to write a story about me.” She laughs bitterly. “Now you’re telling me he died yesterday, not three years ago, and you’re going to find out why and it’s not going to be me. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don’t know, but right now I am _relieved_ , so relieved to be finally free.” She shrugs, looking embarrassed, and takes a sip of her coffee.

Natasha leans forward. “We’re very sorry for all the stress this has put you through, ma’am.”

Mrs. Ullman shakes her head. “Wasn’t you. Almost every other acronym has put their nose in my business, but you’re the first time I’ve seen SHIELD. So tell me, what does SHIELD want from me?”

“Mrs. Ullman—”

“Lauren, please.” She smiles wryly. “I have a complicated relationship with my surname.”

“Lauren,” Natasha says gently,  “this is going to be hard to hear, but your husband was killed during a firefight against SHIELD yesterday. He was part of a group that killed one SHIELD agent and abducted another.”

Lauren covers her mouth with her hand. “God, Justin,” she whispers, “what the fuck.”

“We’re hoping you can shed some light on who these people might be, and why Justin might have wanted to join them.”

“I have got no idea,” she says, shaking her head. “He just went out one night and didn’t come back.”

“Had his behavior changed at all?”

“He was on home leave from war, of course his behavior was changed,” Lauren snaps. She looks up and grimaces. “God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, it’s just--I’ve answered all these questions before. Yes, he was distant. Yes, he was on the phone all the time. No, I don’t know who he was calling. He was unhappy, but I was unhappy too, and I didn’t drop off the face of the earth.” She sighs. “Sorry.”

Natasha opens her mouth, but Clint leans forward to cut her off. “Was money important to your husband?” he asks, because Clint gets it. Lauren’s not being difficult; she’s frustrated and doesn’t want to waste her time. _So let’s ask her questions that don’t waste her time._

Lauren blinks. “No,” she says slowly, “he drove a twenty-year-old pickup his dad gave him second-hand. Didn’t need nice clothes, didn’t need a nice house. We fought a lot about that, actually, because I wanted to be respectable, and he didn’t see the point.”

 _Bingo_. “If it wasn’t for the paycheck, then, why did Justin join the military?”

“He liked history,” she says, eyes going soft. “That was his favorite subject in high school, you know. He liked the idea of individuals coming together to be a part of something bigger. He thought he could find that in the military.”

“Do you think he did? Was the military what he wanted?”

She shrugs. “In the beginning, yeah. But after a while he started saying that what he was doing didn’t mean anything, that it was all bullshit. I think that’s part of why he was so unhappy, you know?”

Clint nods. “Now, let me ask you a question,” he says, and Tasha’s gonna kill him for this, _oops_ , “in your opinion, what would an organization need to offer Justin to make deserting the military worthwhile? Could money convince him to go after SHIELD agents?”

“Absolutely not.” Lauren shakes her head. “I’m telling you, the guy lived in his own head. Money would not have occurred to him.”

“So how would they convince him? Would it have to be an intellectual argument? Could they make him believe in something?”

“Holy shit,” Lauren says, slowly, and Clint decides he loves her, this sarcastic bathrobed woman, who has too many knick knacks and got married at eighteen only to be widowed at twenty-six. “Holy shit,” she says again, “I think Justin joined a cult.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am constantly blown away by the support and kindness you all have given me while writing this fic. Thank you very much. All my love and a happy new year.


	4. Bigger Fish to Fry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He grins excitedly. He can do cults. You just figure out their particular brand of crazy and all their secrets fall in line.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this update is SUPER OVERDUE and i have five million comments and messages from ya'll that need answering but right now I think we can all use a little happy. I love you!

Natasha might murder him. “You had no right to pull that shit,” she says angrily, throwing the car into gear and driving away. “You endangered that civilian just by putting those ideas into her head.”

“That civilian wants to be endangered!” Clint says, gesturing wildly from the passenger's seat. “She’s spent the past three years feeling goddamn helpless, and now she got to help find a missing agent! She feels important!”

“She’ll continue to feel important right up until she gets killed by this organization because she knows too much.”

Clint can’t stop grinning. “So you agree it’s a cult, then.”

Natasha glances over at him. “I agree that Justin Ullman fits the profile of a person who would join a cult.”

Oh, fuck yeah, Natasha thinks he’s right. After Clint’s _super enlightening and helpful_ conversation with Lauren, she let them browse through Ullman’s old things. He had books on religion and philosophy, even conspiracy theories, but according to Lauren, Justin never felt satisfied with any explanation offered. It turned out that only half the weird knick-knacks cluttering up the house belonged to Lauren: if it was of a DC comic book hero or a tiny child with a sheep, it was hers, but if it was ancient-looking, like cheap travel knock-offs of Greek statues or Chinese buddhas, it was Justin’s.

Totally a cult member. Totally a cult.

“Can we conference call?” Clint asks excitedly. “Please can we conference call?”

Natasha sighs. “Fine.”

Within minutes they’ve got Nick, Melinda, and Maria on the line. “It’s a cult!” Clint shouts into the speakerphone, and explains what they learned about Justin.

When Clint is finished, Nick sighs deeply. “It sounds plausible, Barton. Good work.”

Clint may blush a little bit; even after all these years and Phil’s careful nurturing, praise is still something he’s never going to understand. Nat pinches his cheek because she’s an asshole.

“Ullman’s widow said something that got me thinking,” Natasha says, pulling her hand back from where it was molesting Clint’s face. “She said that a tabloid journalist ‘tried’ to write a story, but it never got published. We already know Ullman’s DNA and fingerprints were wiped from databases. If the story was suppressed, we’re talking about influence over several fields and geographic locations.”

“That would explain what we’re seeing,” Maria sighs.  “I’ve been keeping it quiet from my team--since, you know, we don’t know if they’re traitors--but this is looking less and less like someone hacked into our SHIELD communications, and more and more like we were fed bad intelligence to begin with.”

“Can you explore that idea without alerting your team?” Nick asks.

“I’ve got a meeting with an old buddy in the Australian intelligence ladder today.  I’m going to see what he can scrounge up for us.”

“Good. Keep it up, guys. We’re getting closer and closer, here.” Nick terminates the conference calls.

Clint holds the phone in the air.  "It's a cult!" He grins excitedly. He can do cults. You just figure out their particular brand of crazy and all their secrets fall in line. "A cult!"

"A secret society," Tasha disagrees, but she can't quite suppress a smile. "A shadow organization."

"Also called cults!" Clint slams his hands against the dashboard and begins to sing, to the tune of the fun part of "Stars and Stripes Forever," also referred to as "Be Kind to Your Webfooted Friends":

_“It's a cult, it's a cult, it's a cult_

_Phil got kidnapped by demented assholes_

_The answer is always a cult_

_Because fate likes to shit on my life.”_

***

Phil watches one of the scientists’ computer screens as it flashes blue, then red, then blue again.

The computer is hooked up to a microscope, which is pointed at a petri dish of blood.  Phil’s blood, turning from iron-rich red to copper blue every time a scientist pokes it with a slim metal rod.  Phil, for hopefully self-explanatory reasons, has never seen his transformation, only felt it.  It’s disconcerting, watching how easily his cells bend and stretch into an entirely different species. Phil hates it.

The day the SHIELD doctors cleared Phil’s recently restored human body for processing alcohol, Nick took him to a bar and got him roaring drunk.  Around Beer Number 7, Phil dropped his poker face and sloppily told Nick every detail he’d been keeping in about living in the aquarium.  “Don’t let me become a science experiment,” Phil had begged. “Don’t lock me up in a lab again.”

Nick promised him that night he would do all he could to keep Phil away from SHIELD scientists. He was good to his word.  No one ever ran experiments on his blood; the details of Phil’s transformations were kept strictly need-to-know.  It’s why SHIELD still used Leweski’s clunky radiation machine to de-octopus Phil.  It’s why no one cracked the pattern of Phil’s re-octopusing.

Phil ended up a lab experiment anyways. Doesn’t that fucking chafe?

It’s clear that kidnapping and studying Phil was only a small part of this lab’s larger operations.  There’s the mimic octopus next door, for one. (It’s currently floating upside down in the tank, but as no one is alarmed Phil is guessing it’s played dead many times before).  The lab holds fifteen scientists in total, spread out along lab tables and poking expensive-looking equipment.  Someone in the far corner is titrating a purple liquid, while a scientist close to the tanks —

Oh, she’s good.  She’s very good.  The young woman is a picture of studiousness, red hair pulled tight into a bun and her pale face trained on the computer screen.  But every few minutes, her left hand creeps down into a desk drawer while her right hand taps the screen to look busy.  She has positioned her work station in such a way that the other scientists are all to her right, with only Phil and the aquarium tanks on her left.

She’s good, but Phil is better, and she’s just shown a desperate octopus that there is something in that drawer worth hiding.

***

“You need to sleep.”

Clint opens his eyes to stare at Natasha standing over him. “Excuse you, I was sleeping,” he says, gesturing to himself. He’s reclining in a conference room chair with his feet up on the table. “This is a perfectly acceptable sleeping position.”

“There is a difference,” Natasha says, “between assuming a sleeping position and actually sleeping.”

Clint shrugs. “Well, I was sleeping.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“How do you know? Did you perform a brain scan? Were you measuring my breaths? Did you—”

Clint’s phone rings, cutting him off. He sticks his tongue out at Tasha and answers it. “Cash For Gold, Anaheim Strip Mall and Emporium, this is Clint speaking.”

“WHICH ONE OF YOU MOTHERFUCKERS LET MARIA GET SHOT?” A voice screams out of the phone.

“The hell?” Clint holds the phone away from his ear so he can check the caller ID. “Jasper, what the fuck? Where are you? What’s going on?”

“WHAT’S GOING ON IS THAT MARIA GOT SHOT, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS.”

“Jasper, calm down what — when did Maria get shot? And how do you know about it before Natasha?” Natasha raises an eyebrow at him, and Clint shrugs. Natasha always knows shit before Clint does.

At that moment, Nick bursts into the conference room, coat billowing around him.  Melinda follows at his heels.  “Hill got shot.”

Clint gestures to the phone and puts it on speaker.  “We know. Can someone please give us an explanation that’s longer than three words?”

“MARIA’S OLD DRINKING BUDDY PROBABLY BELONGS TO WHATEVER SHIT-LICKING SOCIETY TOOK PHIL, AND WE KNOW THIS BECAUSE _HE SHOT HER.”_

Clint looks at Nick. Nick nods.  “Sitwell was already on assignment in Indonesia, so I gave Hill the go-ahead to take him out whenever she needed back-up in Australia.  She pulled him before her meeting, said something didn’t feel right and she wanted him with her in Sydney.”

“AND I WAS JUST LANDING WHEN SHE CALLED ME A SECOND TIME TELLING ME SHE GOT FUCKING SHOT.”

“What did Maria say to you?” Natasha asks, frowning.

“SHE SAID, ‘DON’T YOU FUCKING CODDLE ME, YOU SON OF A BITCH, GET YOUR ASS DOWN TO THIS HANDJOB’S HOUSE BEFORE THE AUSTRALIANS CLEAN IT OF ANY USEFUL INFORMATION.’”

“Wiser words,” Melinda murmurs, smirking.

The next five minutes are a terrible, profanity-laced audio commentary as Jasper keeps the on speaker as he weaves through Sydney traffic, which gets abruptly cut off with, “at the fucker’s house, gotta get my patsy on.”

“Well,” Natasha says into the silence, “does anyone want to play scrabble?”

Clint’s phone pings. _time to play everyone’s favorite game, bored american who texts too much._

“Oh, good,” Natasha says over his shoulder, “we get the livestream.”

At some point, the other three trail off to go get important stuff done, presumably because their work-life balance hasn’t been obliterated like Clint’s has.  Clint, though, he has literally nothing to accomplish but stare at at his phone and wait for Jasper’s increasingly sarcastic texts. 

_maria’s drinking buddy slash attempted murderer has got a THING for weird renaissance art_

**** _mustachioed aussie keeps getting pissed at me. i love it. keep the evil stares coming. i feed off of animosity._

_how many antique busts of handsome hot men can u collect b4 it stops being an appreciation of the arts and starts being a fetish_

_no1 is removing wiretaps or finding hidden skeletons. im disappointed_

_oh a library of rare books. how original u rich white man_

_what do u call a trident with 4 prongs. is this poseiden wielding a fork_

Clint scrambles upright.  His fingers are shaking as he slides them across his phone’s screen. _TAKE PICTURES OF ANY AND ALL ART YOU SEE,_ he texts back.

_jfc barton just because u live in nyc doesnt mean u have 2 stick the met up ur asshole_

_JUST DO IT SITWELL!!!!_

Clint changes screens and dials quickly. 

“Hello?” Lauren Ullman answers.

“Hi, Lauren? It’s me, Clint.”

“What’s going on?” Lauren’s voice goes sharp.

“Listen, Lauren, your husband’s little history statues.  Most of them are Greek or Roman, yeah?”

There’s a shuffling noise.  “I mean, I’m not sure I can tell, but a lot of them look like cheap Made in China models of something you’d find in a European museum, sure.”

“You know the one in the bathroom? Holding out a trident?”

“How the hell should I — okay, this one. It’s got a tiny angry face and it’s pointing a trident at me like it’s trying to get my eye. Only, aren’t tridents supposed to have three pointy things? This guy’s got a four-pointed sucker.”

_Holy hell._ “Listen, Lauren stay right there. Don’t lose that statue, I’ll be right there.” Clint hangs up and runs out the door, looking for Natasha.

_It’s a cult, it’s a cult, it’s a cult…_


	5. Fishing Expedition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phil would cry if his eyes retained the ability to self-moisturize.

“How much SHIELD business do you think Akron, Ohio sees?” Clint asks from the passenger seat, looking out the window at the sleepy nighttime streets. “Like, I think the past twenty-four hours have doubled their yearly average.”

“Small industrial cities are the heart of American culture,” Natasha says, changing lanes.

“That was a joke, right?” Clint’s phone rings, and he fishes around in his pocket.  “Right?”

Natasha says nothing.

Clint checks the caller ID.  “Hey, Lauren, we’re almost there.”

“Someone’s in my house,” Lauren whispers. There’s a weird echo in the line--she may be calling from the bathroom.  “Oh god, Clint, what’s happening?”

“ _Shit._ It’s okay, Lauren, we’re gonna be there, we’re gonna help you.” Clint turns to Natasha.  “How far away are we?”

“Six minutes,” Natasha says, shaking her head. “Wait.” She presses a button on the dashboard, and all the streetlights in front of them flick green.  “Three.”

“We’re gonna be there in three minutes, okay, Lauren? Just stay still, we’ll take care of him.”

“I think he’s getting closer,” she whispers.  “He’s not taking my stuff, Clint, I think, I think—”

“We’re gonna be there,” Clint swears, hand clutching the side of his seat.  “I’m not gonna let him—”

“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU UGLY PIECE OF SHIT!”

Clint hears a scuffle and a hiss and a deep yell.  Lauren screams, sounding more like a war cry.  “Lauren?”

“I’m out of the bathroom, I pepper sprayed him in the fucking face and he dropped but what do I, where do I—”

“Get outside,” Clint commands.  “Get outside, make as much noise as you can, make as big a stir as you can, get your neighbors to come outside, go outside, outside now—”

Natasha whips the car around the corner just as Lauren barrels out of her house, screaming at the top of her fucking lungs. Natasha throws the car in park, and she and Clint scramble into action wordlessly, the way you only can after years of working and bleeding and being shot at together.  Natasha rushes to the doorway, just as a very red-faced goon steps out.  Clint runs to Lauren, grabbing her into a hug that also conveniently places his body between her and her kidnapper.

Natasha shoves an icer in the guy’s neck and brings him down in less than eight seconds. Lauren cries quietly on Clint’s shoulder.

“Pepper spray?” Clint asks quietly.

She laughs wetly.  “I saw it on CNN.”

“Well.” Clint watches Natasha efficiently strip the unconscious man of weapons. “Thank fuck for CNN.”

***

Phil does not have to wait long to discover what secrets the young scientist is hiding.  The lab shuts down every night - or rather, Phil tells himself, the lab shuts down every ten hours in a twenty-four hour cycle.  The lights are turned off and the scientists leave, but for all Phil knows they could be in a subterranean cavern or the Arctic Circle where the traditional night/day distinction does not apply. 

In this liminal time, then, between the end of one period of activity and the beginning of another, the curly-haired scientist walks into the lab with a clipboard and her head held high.  She sits down at her station and fiddles importantly with the computer screen in front of her.  After a couple minutes, she reaches into the drawer and closes it again.  Clint would be impressed - nothing appears to be in her hand or up her sleeves.  The woman then stands and takes two steps backward and three steps to the left. 

She pulls a smartphone out of her sleeve.  She presses the screen and puts it up to her ear, turning so that her mouth faces Phil ever-so-conveniently.

“Hi, Mom.”  Phil was not expecting that one. “No, I’m good. Eating three square meals.  How’s ( _Jack/Zach)_?”

The scientist listens, not saying anything.  Phil is perplexed.  Based on her precise movements earlier, he’s guessing she has calculated the exact position she needs to stand in to hide in the security cameras’ blind spot.  The premeditation and creativity it must have taken to smuggle in a contraband cellphone and devise a way to contact the outside without getting caught...and she uses it to combat homesickness?

Phil waits her out to see if the conversation touches anything more interesting, but it doesn’t. The scientist just keeps asking questions about Jack/Zach.  After a few brief minutes, she hangs up with an _I love you_ and walks back - three steps to the right, two steps forward - and slips the cell phone back in the drawer.  She types on her computer for a while longer to keep up the illusion, then walks out the door as assertively as she walked in.

Phil would cry if his eyes retained the ability to self-moisturize.  He turns to his friend excitedly.  He holds a tentacle up to his eyeball and wiggles it, trying to convey the universal sign for _holy crap a phone_ the best way he knows how.  To his dismay, the other octopus just shrugs its tentacles slowly, clearly not excited about the news.  Except, Phil realizes, that the phone really isn’t news.  The scientist must creep in here to make calls all the time.  The mimic octopus has always known there was a phone in the drawer.  It just didn’t have anybody to call.

That’s about to change.

***

The plane ride back to HQ is not as awkward as it could be, considering one guest had to be kept unconscious and the other was just recovering from attempted murder.  Clint finds the snacks he had hidden away on the Quinjet, so he and Lauren munch on Chili Cheese Fritos while Natasha flies the plane. Normally, they’d take over an interrogation room in the local FBI office and bring in some more SHIELD agents, but when high level Australians start shooting at Assistant Directors, it’s time to re-evaluate SHIELD policy.  The phone call with Fury had lasted all of thirty seconds, ending with an exasperated, “Stop bringing home strays, Barton.” Clint had only grinned.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren says, hugging her shoulders.

“Why?” Clint asks, stuffing his mouth with Fritos. 

“Your boss? He told you to stop bringing home strays. I don’t want you to get in trouble because of me.”

Clint shakes his head, swallowing.  “No, no, Fury’s telling me everything is good.  We at SHIELD have a long and proud history of stray-collecting.”

Lauren raises her eyebrows. “What does that mean?”

Clint shrugs. “I was a stray.”  He takes another handful of Fritos.  “I, uh, I wasn’t such a good guy, back in the day.  I would take a lot of robbery jobs, some hit man stuff, and I knew in a way it was wrong.  But I thought, since only bad guys got dead, who cared?  But then the boss I was working for gave me an assassination target, and it was--he was a kid.  A goddamned child.”  Lauren puts a hand over her mouth. “I wouldn’t do it.  I ran, and the boss sent guys after me to try and kill me. Fury found me in a bar. Told me that if I worked for SHIELD, I’d be safe — not just from the bad guys, but safe from the kind of jobs that wreck your soul.” 

Lauren looks sad, so Clint holds the Frito bag out to her.  “We’ll keep you safe,” Clint promises. “That’s what Fury was telling me.”

“Okay, Clint,” Lauren smiles, and takes a chip.

When they land, Fury has already arranged for Lauren to be watched over by Dina from Accounting.  Dina is eighty-five and by all rights should have retired before Clint even got to SHIELD, but she refuses to leave because, and Clint quotes, “Mr. Nick needs me.”  Nick would probably agree.  In fact, Clint would bet good money that Dina’s got a secret tracker of her own.

After leaving Lauren lying on the couch in the bubbly sanctuary of Dina’s office, Clint goes up to the interrogation room and stands with Melinda behind a one-way mirror as they watch Nick and Natasha start interrogating the would-be assassin.

The kid lounging at the table is really that: a _kid_ , pale, freckly, and really fucking young.  His fingerprints and DNA don’t show up in any registry, like Justin’s didn’t, but just looking at the kid, he can’t be more than twenty-three.  He’s still got baby fat in his cheeks, and he’s got a cocky grin that says he’d be leaning back in his chair if it weren’t bolted to the ground.

“So tell me,” Nick opens, leaning against the door, “why haven’t you killed yourself yet?”

The kid’s grin slips, and he looks from Nick to Natasha, who’s sitting in a chair across from him. “Huh?”

“The big people who have sat in this room, terrorists, HYDRA agents, et cetera, they usually have cyanide pills embedded in their teeth.  We’ve had a couple exploding brain implants, those have been fun.  But you didn’t have anything.  No contingency plan for if you got caught. Which tells me that either you’re not devoted enough to your cause to die for it — or your cause isn’t devoted enough to you to tell you anything worth killing you for. So I wanna know, which idiot are you?”

The kid laughs.  “We’re the truth.  We don’t need barbaric scare tactics to provoke loyalty.”

Nick raises an eyebrow.  “‘Barbaric’? So, you’re, what, a gentleman killer of widows in their bathrobes?”

“Sometimes losses can be efficient,” the kid shrugs.  “But we take care of our own.”

“Murdering each other’s family, that makes you feel taken care of?”

“They’re not our family!” He yells, making Clint jump with how _not-called-for_ it was.  Nick’s found a hot button.  “Your old people keep you down.  We build you up.”

“Thanks for the tip, kid,” Melinda smirks.  She moves towards a computer and begins typing frantically.

Inside the interrogation room, Nick laughs. “They really got you to swallow that crap, huh?”

The kid straightens.  “Plebes don’t understand.”

“Oh, yeah? An what’s a plebe? What separates me from you?”

Back inside, Melinda sits up. “Bingo,” she says.  “You can erase all the official records you want, but it doesn’t mean shit when you leave MySpace up.”

She swivels the screen towards Clint. _!!! HELP !!!! MY BROTHER RAN AWAY IF YOU SEE THIS BOY PLEASE CALL 911 PLSSSSS !!!!!!!_

The kid is grinning.  “A plebe thinks he knows how power is wielded on this earth.  And we know the truth.”

Melinda taps a mic on the table and speaks into it.  “His name is Aaron Coleman, he’s eighteen, he ran away from his parents’ home when he was fifteen. He’s got a little sister, her name is Janet.”

Natasha sits forward at the table.  “And Janet? Is she a plebe?”

The kid turns white as a sheet.

“She’s doing well, in case you were wondering. She’s enrolled at Franklin High now,” Natasha repeats after May.  “She’s getting straight B’s, except for English, there she’s got an A-.  Benny Johnson asked her out last week, she’s pretty excited. Oh, and she misses you.  Makes a Facebook post on your birthday every year.”

Aaron looks from Natasha to Nick and back. “I--they said no one could ever find me.”

“That’s my question answered, then,” Nick says, shrugging.  “You’re the idiot your cause doesn’t care about.”

“No, no, that’s not true. They’re gonna watch out for me. They’re my family.”

Nick laughs. “Kid, you’re in SHIELD custody.  We know your name, your history.  Do you really think they haven’t already written you off as a, what did you call it, ‘efficient loss’?”

“You’re wrong,” Aaron says, his voice wet. “They were gonna take me. Just one more mission, and they were gonna take me.”

“Where? You gonna Jonestown your way to the mothership?”

Aaron laughs.  “You’re such a goddamn plebe, you don’t even know, no one knows—”

“Knows that you’re a gullible sucker? Because—” 

“We found it! We stole it right under your noses!  You’re so proud of yourselves with your Tesseracts and your super-soldiers, but we’ve been guarding it for millenia and you’ve never figured it out! You’re idiots, all of you, SHIELDs and militaries and fucking United Nations.”  He spreads his arms wide, magnanimous.  “We have Atlantis, and that’s exactly where I’m going when I get out of this mess.”

Back behind the mirror, Clint exchanges glances with Melinda.  “Woah,” he says.

“The poor fucker,” Melinda agrees.


	6. Blood in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Yeah, but, I mean, you can’t have a cult about something that’s true, can you?”

“Well, the kid’s right about one thing,” Melinda sighs over the conference table.  “We really don’t know who this group is.  Aaron’s description doesn’t fit the profile of any documented organization.  The Atlantis story makes it sound like a textbook destructive cult, but their level of sophistication and influence seems almost para-military.”

“Hey guys,” Clint says from his spinny chair, “what if it’s not a cult?”

“I will end you, Barton,” Natasha growls.

“No, I’m serious!”

“You sang a song about how it had to be cult.”

“Yeah, but, I mean, you can’t have a cult about something that’s _true_ , can you?”

“It’s not true,” Nick says mildly from the head of the table.

“How do you know? What if it’s all real, and there’s really some deep-sea _Da Vinci Code_ fuckers hiding Atlantis in, like, Greek statue butts?”

“It’s not true,” Nick repeats, looking annoyed.

Clint’s phone rings. It’s Lauren. “Hi. Did you run out of Fritos?”

“Can you come down here?” Lauren sounds worried, and Clint sits up sharply.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Well, something. But not an emergency like that. Dina’s upset. Just, can you come down to Dina’s office? Just you and Mr. Fury?”

Clint stands up.  “Yeah, we’ll be there.” He hangs up.  “Something happened to Dina, Nick.” Nick nods and leaves out the door, Clint following.

When they get to Dina’s office, Lauren rushes up to Clint, her hands wringing.  Nick sweeps past them to sit next to Dina, who is weeping on the couch.  “I’m sorry,” Lauren bursts out, “I’m really sorry, we were just chatting and gossiping, and I started telling her what I heard from you and Natasha on the plane, and —”

“Is she right?” Dina asks, lifting her face to stare at Nick.  “Is the mole really from Siberia? It’s Miller, isn’t it?”

“Why do you think it’s Miller?” Nick asks softly.

Dina’s wrinkled face crumples with new tears. “Because I told her.  I told her everything.  I process the Siberia bases paperwork, and Miller was my main point of contact.  I’d call her and she’d ask after you all, but especially after Mr. Phil on account of how she led the mission to save him.”

“And you told her,” Nick said kindly, “Why wouldn’t you?”

“She was so nice.  Always remembered my grandchildren’s names.  I told her about every injury Mr. Phil and Mr. Clint got, even _those ones_. She told me the talking-to-whales story was sweet.” Dina puts her head in her hands.  “She was my friend.” Nick wraps Dina up in a hug.

Clint feels lost, like an untethered balloon in a hurricane.  He walks numbly out of the office, forgetting to say goodbye to Lauren.  He finds himself back in the conference room where Natasha and Melinda are still sitting.  “Miller,” he says to them, swallowing hard.  “She conned information about Phil from Dina. Miller had it all, every puzzle piece she needed to pull something like this off.”

Melinda pulls her phone out and calls Siberia. Clint turns to Natasha, who is staring at the wall.  “She played me,” she says.

“Agent Stephens,” Melinda barks into the phone, “I need you to place Agent Miller in immediate—” She stops sharply. “Why didn’t you report her?” A longer pause. ”Fan-fucking-tastic, Agent Stephens.” She hangs up.  “Miller went AWOL an hour after you guys left the Siberia base.  Apparently that’s standard procedure up there. They don’t report delinquent agents until they’re gone four days.”

“How could she have played me?” Natasha asks the wall.

Clint loses it.  He walks out the door, slamming the door behind him.  He storms the hallways, but there’s nowhere to go. Clint reaches a dead-end, and in frustration he does something he hasn’t done in ten years, not since Phil Coulson first promised to keep Clint safe:

Clint climbs into the vents.

***

When he was an octopus, Phil had a favorite rock.

This story is important. Maybe to some people it sounds like the boring ramblings of a tottering old man, but some people like to hang upside down in a tree for twelve hours straight staring at bumblebees and are therefore not good judges of what "boring" means.

Phil's rock meant the world to him in that gangster’s aquarium. Phil had been stripped of control over his surroundings and his own body, but he could control this rock. lt was a striped gray, smooth and rounded on one side and jagged on the other. It fit in his tentacle like it was a part of him. With this rock as a tool, he could pry open any lid, cut at any fabric, and poke holes in plastic to squeeze through.  To Phil, his rock meant freedom.  Ten years later, that rock is sitting on his nightstand by the bed he shares with the man he loves, proof that hope is never useless.

Ten years later, Phil is an octopus again.  And what do you know, this tank is full of rocks.

He works through the night, striking rocks against each other until one cracks into a sharp edge.  He hides it under the others at the bottom of his tank, and waits through another work cycle.  When the lab gets dark, he draws it out again and floats to the top of his tank.  He reaches up, and touches the familiar slippery texture of Astroturf.  Sure enough, his tentacle slides right off. 

Then he brings up the sharp edge of the rock, and cuts a ragged slice through the Astroturf.  He reaches again with another tentacle, and wiggles in between until he can sucker onto the surface underneath. He does this a second time, a third, a fourth, until seven of his legs are attached to the surface of the lid.  With an internal grunt, he forces the lid up and over, so that an inch gap is revealed.  Phil forces himself through that gap, climbing up until he is outside of his tank, body hanging suspended by a tentacle.

His lungs burn at the lack of water, but he ignores it.  He drops to the floor and feels the rubbery Astroturf all around him.  He reaches forward with the tentacle that holds the rock and cuts a slice into the Astroturf, then uses another tentacle to sucker onto the floor below and pull his body forward.  He propels himself like this, little by little, until he’s past the Astroturf and onto the linoleum.

After that, it’s quick work to slide to the scientist’s lab table and open her drawer.  He folds himself into the drawer and stares at her phone. He can feel his hearts pumping, and hopes to god his cold-blooded veins have warmed him enough for the touchscreen to respond to his tentacles.

***

The vent Clint is lying down in rattles sharply.  “Come out, Barton,” Clint hears Nick call.

Clint panics. He remembers the way Maria and Nick talked about him when he first came to SHIELD - _The only one of us who could ever have controlled Barton was Coulson._ He doesn’t want to be treated like a live bomb again.  He kicks out a vent cover and scrambles down into the room.

Nick is staring at him, expression hard.

“Sorry, sorry,” Clint says, wiping his hand along his nose to get the snot out. “This is nothing, I’m okay. I promise, sir, I won’t let my emotions get in the way of the job.”

Nick steps close to Clint, gets right in his face. “Let your emotions get in the way, Clint.”

Clint blinks.  “I--what?”

“I said, get emotional.” He points a finger at Clint’s chest. “Everybody else would treat this like a mission. Phil went missing once before, remember? The team I assembled, they were good agents, and they wanted their records to continue showing that they were good agents, so when that case got tough they jumped ship. They needed a win, and when we weren’t a win they found other missions with a better chance of success. But you,” Nick grins harshly, “you’ve never given a damn about your reputation.”

“Never said I wanted to improve my station,” Clint murmurs.

Nick shakes his head, grin turning sincere. “And that is why I need you, Clint. You’re insubordinate, you’re a fucking prick, and you don’t give a damn if the rest of SHIELD thinks you’re batshit.  You’re not here for the glory of solving a missing persons case. You’re here to find Phil. Stay that way. Stay so in love with him it feels like the floor is falling out from under you.  I need to know that in five years, when everybody else has given up on him, you and I are coming into work every day hungry to find Phil. You need to run away to cry sometimes? I will give you your own office just so you can lock yourself in it and cry, if that means that one day I get to get drunk on the open bar at your wedding. Get emotional, Clint, because I am convinced that is the only way we will find him.”

Nick turns to walk out the door, leather coat billowing behind him.

And that’s when Clint’s phone dings with a text message. Nick sighs and stops. “Ruining my dramatic moment, kid.”

“Sorry,” Clint shrugs, and fishes his phone out of his pocket.

**Blocked:**

“ _ Motherfucker _ ,” Clint whispers.

Nick turns around. “I beg your pardon?” 

“Motherfucking asshole goddamn fucker.” He types furiously, his hands shaking.  

**Me:** ur the hashtag worst

Clint grips the edges of his phone so hard his knuckles turn white.   _ You goddamn beautiful bastard. _

**Blocked:** still octopus in lab idk where stole phone from scientist

**Blocked:** olivia miller involved she’s here no more details yet

**Blocked: □**

**Blocked:** alarm tripped gtg

**Blocked:** i love you

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love you all. I hope you have an absolutely wonderful end of the year after all this shit we've gone through. 
> 
> I posted three chapters because it's been literal months and these were supposed to be posted a long time ago. This is the end of my "in order" writing, which means I have no idea when I'll be able to string the pieces together, write the gaps, and post the next chapter.
> 
> Let me know if the texts at the end of the chapter don't load for you/if there's anything I can do to make them easier for text-to-speech or things like that. (PS: the box is supposed to be a box. Phil is sneaky like that.)

**Author's Note:**

> Come scream and throw octopus pictures at me [here on tumblr!](http://linguisticjubilee.tumblr.com)


End file.
